Many modern electronic mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, are driven by market requirements to be increasingly thin and more powerful. Many of these electronic mobile devices include one or more cameras used for capturing still images and/or video. As with other functions of the electronic mobile devices, the cameras used are driven by market requirements to improve performance, particularly in the form of improved image and/or video quality. The improvements in overall imaging quality may result in increased image resolution, increased low-light sensitivity, decreased image “noise,” increased color accuracy, increased image uniformity, and/or other image quality characteristics.
However, improvements in the camera performance are often constrained by the requirement that the camera fit into an increasingly thin electronic mobile device. Traditionally, improving camera quality implies using a larger image sensor and/or a lens with a larger diameter. As a consequence of the traditional approach, the distance from the image sensor of the camera to the lens (the “optical track”) must be increased in order to accommodate the larger sensor and/or lens. Instead, market requirements suggest that optical tracks should be as short as possible in order to fit within increasingly thin electronic mobile devices, thus limiting the image quality of the cameras.